retiredmartin
retiredmartin
Martin
Retired NHS, doing long walks around UK and the world to record the great bits. Focused on Good Beer Guide pubs and live music.
Latest Posts
July 2026. Dodington. Whitchurch. “Ain’t that just lil ‘ol England” is a line said to me by (wait for it) an American tourist in Haddenham (Oxon) a few years back as she stared at a street of coloured timber. Several Haddenhams, and many...
July 2026. Whitchurch. Shropshire. By law all blog posts must show where the subject of your writing is in relation to Wrexham. Well, Whitchurch must be close, as I had Magic Dragon’s beers in three (3) pubs last Thursday. A fourth was...
July 2026. Whitchurch (Shropshire). OK, they’re not all “wonders“, but illiteration innit ? Whitchurch (Salop, there’s loads of them. See also : Newport) is a pretty little town, overlooked by those on the way down to bigger hitters like...
July 2026. Heading towards Wales. Regular readers will know that “family issues” have conspired to keep our travels to a circuit between Sheffield, Cambridge and Tunbridge Wells these last few years, with a few interludes in the Balkans...
July 2026. Rotherham. Mrs RM’s sports injury persisted into the new week, scuppering a restart of the Cask Camino. I said “I’m off” and took the tram down into Sheffield, and just kept riding on the Tram Train, like in a 10,000 Maniacs...
July 2026. Sheffield. Back from Darlington and a disappointing Chinese takeaway (life lesson : never go back) I popped next door (ish) to see how many folk were going to watch the World Cup Final at our local. The Blind Monkey had decent...
July 2026. Middleton One Row. Near Darlington. From the Steam Machine I walked to Heighington Station, a dull mile through industrial estates, ending at a dead pub commemorating the first ever train. Somewhere along the way I realised I...
July 2026. Newton Aycliffe. County Durham. A fascinating extract from the CAMRA pubs website here; The birth of the railways, the decline of the mines, the posh pubs either side of the Great North Road, and a star in the craft beer...
July 2026. Newton Aycliffe. Durham. I was staying overnight in a grim car park in Darlington as I didn’t fancy paying the outrageous hotel prices that kick in during the English summer. That £1,492 a night wellness retreat is walking...
July 2026. Hope Town. Darlington. A fifth night parked up in a campervan in the suburbs of Darlington in a year; Cockerton Parish Council are probably debating me now. Cockerton, where W. Alderson & Son‘s baps had so enraptured me last...
July 2026. Darlington. Every year brings a new Beer Guide entry in the posh bit of Darlington, west of the Great North Road. Sometimes it’s a rough and ready place like last year’s Kirk; more often it’s an upmarket diner like the one in...
July 2026. Sheffield. Foiled in my search for a can of tomato gose (though the Neptune Black Cherry Oatmeal Stout at Hop Hideout was superb), I took the tram back towards RM Towers, wondering if I should make a rare stop at the Welly. At...
July 2026. Sheffield. Back in Sheffield from a cruelly curtailed Cask Camino (CCCC), a man’s thoughts turn to tomato gose. I constantly read how exciting (ugh) the UK beer scene (ugh) is these days, how folk who drink Bass are to be...
July 2026. Keighley. Just the two long-standing Beer Guide entries for Keighley; the upmarket dining of the Tim Taylor tap and the bare boards boozing of the Brown Cow, tucked away on cobbles just off the main drag. A few changes of...
July 2026. Keighley. With Day 7 of the Cask Camino on hold due to a sporting injury, I spend an unnecessary day in Keighley making trips to the town’s three (3) supermarkets (Sainsbury’s, Morrison’s, Asda) to keep Mrs RM topped up with...